Coyote (9 page)

The old adobe city was ringed by a wall of dust, kicked up by panicked refugees flocking in.

I descended the hill to the Paseo de Peralta, the road that virtually encircled Santa Fe. It teemed with heavily laden wagons and carriages — mainly Hispanics hauling their families and their prized possessions into town for safety. The piled-high bags of food and numbers of livestock attached to the rear of their wagons indicated that they estimated their stay would be a long one.

I stood half behind a spindly pine, waiting for a break in the traffic and glad to be unnoticed in the pandemonium. No one looked left or right. Everyone was fixed on getting to their destination — some adobe bunker, deep in the shadow of Fort Marcy. The fort slumped on a hill to the north, overlooking the scared city like an elderly soldier counting his days to retirement. It'd been built by the US army when they first took over, but the neglected fortifications didn't inspire me with any confidence.

There was a break in the long line of wagons, and I was about to cross over the road and into the city proper, when the sound of gunfire and bloodcurdling yells brought everyone to a jittery halt.

I touched the pistol hanging at my side, ready.

All around me men and women were reaching for their rifles with one hand and their children with the other.

We all searched the road to the north.

An overcrowded buggy pulled by a gelding lathered in sweat and whipped into a frenzied gallop by his master streaked past the procession of families. The fierce-faced driver wrenched his exhausted horse into a savage right turn off the main road and into a little side street. He almost overturned them.

Around me, people crossed themselves.

The driver and his two limp passengers were Anglos; they were covered in a blackened coating of dirt and dried blood.

Unable to withstand the sight of so much blood, everyone dropped their reins to follow.

I followed too.

The buggy came to a dust-raising stop outside an adobe building marked ‘Pelletier's Special Services'. There was no indication what those services actually were or just how special, but the blood-covered driver hurled himself through the shop door, bellowing for attention.

I slid into the shade of the porch opposite. It was empty and high enough to give me a clear view over the anxious crowd. Everyone had gathered around the buggy, and the two wounded men it carried, in tight formation.

‘What 'appened, signor?' demanded a shaggy Mexican old-timer in heavily accented English. He'd
shouted the question into the ear of the wounded man on his side of the buggy.

The casualty was a craggy-faced Anglo on the wrong side of forty. The man's blue eyes were open, staring up into the noonday sun. He didn't answer.

Impatient, the old-timer grabbed the buggy passenger's limp shoulder and shook … then gaped at what the motion revealed. Three broken arrows stuck out of the man's blood-soaked back. His head lolled on his shoulders, then flopped, with a resounding crack, onto the side of the buggy. The old-timer jumped back in horror.

‘Injuns,' drawled a young vaquero — a Hispanic cowboy with a big black droopy moustache — from the other side of the buggy. His accent was a twangy mix of Texan and Mexican.

The vaquero spat, sending a black stream of tobacco juice into the dust, then tapped the other casualty lying in the buggy. He was a white-faced boy in his early teens. The boy's eyes were closed and his pain-filled face was covered in a greasy sweat. The arms of his shirt were blue but his torso was soaked browny-black with dried blood.

‘Who was it, son?' asked the vaquero. ‘Where did they get ya?'

The teenager opened his blue eyes, the same hue as the corpse next to him, and gazed at the Hispanic cowboy through a haze of suffering. He was pale with shock and, from the pool of blood that'd congealed on the seat of the buggy next to him, very close to death.

‘Water … Can someone give me some water?' pleaded the boy through cracked lips.

A short Hispanic woman of wide girth pushed the vaquero aside to offer the dying Anglo boy a sip from
her canteen. She tenderly stroked his sweaty forehead, whispering a prayer as she held the canteen to his lips.

The boy took a long thirsty gulp. Some missed his mouth to wash rivulets of dust from his face and drip down his chin … but of what got in, more than half of it gurgled back out of a hole in the shirt over his stomach.

The woman looked down, blanched and grabbed the canteen away from his parched lips.

The boy refocused on the vaquero. ‘It was Apache …'

The crowd gasped. The woman crossed herself.

‘They caught us up on the Rio Grande,' said the boy. ‘Just above where the Rio Hama flows into it. We was down at the river, watering our herd, when the Apache came from behind …'

‘Apache …' murmured the woman with a horrified expression.

The Native American nations that occupied New Mexico were all desert-hardened warriors who survived this harsh land through clever adaptation and sheer bloody-minded determination.

The survival strategies of the Navaho, the Zuni and the Puebloan peoples were to become semi-nomadic graziers or put down roots in pueblo towns. These tactics enabled them to flourish in a harsh environment but also made it easier for their enemies to find them. Which made them easier targets for the US cavalry — the steely hand of discipline in this territory — to strike at will.

The Apache, however, were mobility specialists, tacticians on horseback. They were lethally efficient hunters who operated in small bands that swept through the territory like the wind. They rode like they were born with hooves and their fierce guerrilla
strategies would keep the US army running in circles. Apache leaders would become the stuff of legends … Mangas Coloradas, Cochise and their last great war chief, Geronimo, who successfully outwitted the US army — as well as the Mexican one — for decades.

‘The Apache … I knew it,' declared the shaggy Mexican old-timer, ‘I knew they'd strike back!' He cursed long and hard enough to make the compassionate Hispanic woman put her hands over her ears. ‘Those fools … what have they brought down on our heads?'

The young vaquero swelled up like a bantam rooster about to crow. ‘Well, old man, what did you expect us to do? These red dogs slaughtered our governor and his wife and little babies. We had to teach them a lesson! If we sit around waiting for the Americano cavalry to find that devil, Coyote Jack, then the tribes will think we are weak cowards. That we have no honour left to defend.' He shook his finger in the old man's leathered face. ‘And then they'll hunt us like the wolf hunts sheep.'

‘So this is your doing?' barked back the old-timer. ‘Were you one of those fools who went out and shot every last redskin they could find?' He jerked his shaggy head down at the boy. ‘Because of you, now they're all out for revenge!'

The front door of Pelletier's Special Services burst open. A tall, thin man in a long black coat raced out. The bloodstained driver of the buggy was on his heels, closely followed by an assistant wearing a long filthy apron around his waist and bearing what looked like a doctor's bag.

The crowd parted and the tall, thin man made his way through. He was completely bald and his face was so emaciated it hurt to look at it. That, together
with his too thin body, meant he resembled a walking cadaver.

He examined the middle-aged man, collapsed against the side of the buggy. He looked back at the buggy driver and snapped, ‘Forget this one, it is too late,' as though accusing the driver of wasting his precious time. His English was cultured and, from the faint roll of his Rs, still held the trace of a French accent.

‘Pa …' whispered the buggy driver, too exhausted to react. He collapsed down onto the dirt, his trembling legs no longer able to hold him upright.

The tall, thin man slipped around the buggy to the teenage boy. He sniffed once, curled his narrow, bloodless lips with disdain, and proceeded to prod the boy's blood-clotted shirtfront with one long claw-like finger. The boy moaned in agony, but his tormentor gave absolutely no regard to the pain he was causing.

‘Be gentle with the boy, signor,' implored the little Hispanic woman.

He ignored her.

‘What about my brother, Monsewer Pelletier?' urged the buggy driver, begging for a hopeful answer. ‘Did I get him here in time?'

Pelletier didn't reply, merely signalled to his assistant for his medical bag. He opened it and took out a huge pair of shears, which he used to cut the boy's shirt away from his stomach.

The compassionate little woman hissed at the sight and backed away, holding her nose.

A big black arrowhead protruded through a gory mess of gaping flesh, dried blood clots and grey-green tubes. The wound stank of faecal matter — the boy's perforated intestines were exposed.

I shivered.

Bow and arrows were lethal and had been the weapon of choice for millennia with very good reason. Armies had used them to subdue nations and they could even be modified to pierce the metal armour of knights. In North America, the flint and chert arrowheads were powerful enough to drop buffalo — the largest beast on this continent — where they stood.

An arrow from the bow of an expert could kill you as fast and as surely as anything on the planet.

The Apache were experts.

That razor-sharp arrowhead, as well as boring a tunnel through the boy's body, would've carried bacteria-soaked clothing with it. That, together with severing his intestines, meant the boy now had a rotting time bomb exploding from his wound.

The Hispanic woman fought back her tears to clasp the boy's dazed head to her massive bosom. She recited a prayer for his soul.

‘Get the stretchers,' ordered Pelletier, impatient to be inside. His bald head was now dripping with sweat from the hot sun.

His apron-clad assistant shook his head. ‘Can't, sir. The boys took them out this morning to collect those other bodies from the …' He paused, realising the crowd was drinking in every detail.

Pelletier snapped, ‘Then find something to cart them into the shop.' He looked down at the boy, his gory wound still exposed. ‘They both already stink; we have to get them out of the heat before the maggots start.'

The dying boy gazed up at Pelletier in horror.

His assistant raced inside.

‘What about my brother?' insisted the buggy driver, still collapsed in the dirt, a fresh red stain
spreading across his left shoulder. He was refusing to accept what we all knew: that if he was lucky his brother would die quickly rather than linger. There was no help for his wound in this time and place.

Pelletier just shook his head, impatient to be done with these lost causes.

The assistant returned with help. Two pairs of men carried out two rough-hewn pine coffins.

So Pelletier was the doctor and the undertaker. Now that was a conflict of interest …

The buggy driver, unable to get to his feet, watched the four assistants load his father's corpse into one cheap pine-wood coffin, and then his barely alive little brother into the other.

The Hispanic woman walked next to the young boy as they carried him into the shop. She held the boy's hand as he looked around his strange splintery raft in terrified confusion.

‘Zeke!' wailed the boy. ‘Zeke, I'm scared. Don't let them take me!'

The buggy driver looked around imploringly. He was pale with loss of blood and couldn't rise. The young vaquero pulled the buggy driver to his feet and half lifted him to his brother's side.

‘I'm here, Randy, I'm here.' The buggy driver held his brother's dying gaze as they disappeared inside.

The crowd dispersed back to their wagons, shaking their heads. There was one topic of conversation — and one topic alone: they'd been right to take shelter in the old city … but what'd happen to those they left behind?

When the street was empty, I left the shade of the porch, now more than eager to find my destination. It was two streets away and could hold the difference between life and death for me.

The big black arrowhead protruding from the boy's gory stomach wound was wedged in my mind's eye. That could be me. If I had to leave Santa Fe, for whatever reason, in my quest to find Hector, then I was going to need every speck of advantage and protection I could wring from this time and place.

I had a plan, but I didn't know yet if it was the right one …

Pelletier, the undertaker, still stood at the buggy. He wiped the bloodied shears with a dirty cloth and packed them back into his medical bag. I grimaced. Those bacteria-covered shears would infect the next wound they came in contact with. I had to make sure it wasn't me — I wasn't prepared to die for Seymour Kershaw.

The French undertaker looked up at the sound of my boot heels on the stairs of the porch. His beady little eyes started at my black satin top hat, worked their way down my red braids then came back up, with a jerk, to my face.

The undertaker froze, unsure whether to acknowledge me or look away. Then he gave me a deep courtly bow, a twisted gesture of professional respect.

But I was guessing he brought more death than life … so I just curled my lip and left.

I paused in the doorway of Torres Weapons Emporium, my saddlebag over one shoulder.

The shop was jam-packed full of harsh-faced clients tensely trying to jostle the fastest way to the front counter. All were impatient to be served so they could head for home at a dead gallop. The handguns and rifles were all stacked in special display racks on the walls. Underneath sat case upon case of ammunition. The clients at the front shouted their orders and slapped down their silver US dollars. The store clerks grabbed up the coins and shoved over their goods, already impatient for the next man to step up.

Santa Fe had been in the middle of armed conflict, one way or another, for most of its history. The various Native American nations against the Spanish and then the Mexicans; the Mexicans against the Americans; the Native Americans against the Americans; and every mix in between.

And the Torres gunsmiths had done exceedingly well out of the conflicts.

Now, once again, everyone was getting ready to defend their own little patch of ground.

But this wasn't what I'd come for. I walked around the back to the smithy itself.

Out the front, in the shop, they only sold mass-manufactured US merchandise, all prone to jamming and misfires. But out the back they made their own better, more accurate weapons for a higher price. Weapons that'd last a lifetime. The Torres smithy serviced the local Spanish landowners who'd defended their territory for centuries and knew the value of investing in their weapons. The Torres made superb pieces, including the two handmade pistols that hung at my side.

In the smithy there was a team of workers busy around a central fire and bellows. Next to the fire a massive iron anvil was being used for shaping the red-hot steel rods. If this place was true to its reputation then the rods were made of the finest weapons-grade steel in the New World. On the far wall two steam-powered lathes ran full pelt, machining the steel rods to the fine tolerances required for precision weaponry.

At the anvil, a black-haired giant glanced up and saw me. ‘Signor …'

I pre-empted him. ‘I'm looking for Signor Domenico Torres.' My voice was naturally low, so it didn't take much adjustment to suit my cover.

I moved out of the shadows.

He took one look at my red braids and black top hat and reached for the heavy hammer he'd been using to pound the steel at his side.

He'd recognised me for sure.

The real John Eriksen was twenty-one years old with a baby-face and the reflexes of a steel trap. Once a farm boy, he'd killed his first man at
fourteen over a land dispute. He'd been ambushed on his way home by his neighbour's sons who'd just shot Eriksen's father and two sisters. Eriksen killed one of them and spent two years tracking down the rest of the family.

You might say he developed a new life skill.

Destitute at sixteen, Eriksen became the youngest bounty hunter in Wyoming, a deadly territory and an even deadlier trade where the stronger ones eat the weak. Sometimes literally. By eighteen he'd faced down the worst kinds of predators in a lawless land. By twenty he'd become a frontier legend with his famous trademark of red Viking braids to honour his Norwegian father, and his most famous victim's black satin top hat as a souvenir.

‘I am Domenico Torres' son,' stated the burly giant proudly. ‘What business could you possibly have with my family?' The last sentence was a threat.

‘I give you my word, I mean your father no harm. I have a special order to place with him.' I carefully touched the pistols hanging at my side. ‘I want more of these.'

I unhooked a bag of gold coins from my belt and threw them to him.

He caught the bag, relieved at my explanation, but was still unsure. Who would willingly introduce me to someone they loved?

‘And I have news for Signor Torres from Spain.' This time I spoke in purest Castilian Spanish. My translator was programmed for more than twenty European and indigenous languages. ‘Believe me, he will want to hear what I have to say.'

Bemused, the giant led me up the stairs and into a messy office. He didn't know his father's deep, dark secret. In this time and place no one did.

If he had, the son would've tried to kill me.

Weapons covered all four walls of the office. But not the kind that would've seen the light of day in this country. There were heavy maces, long swords as used in the Middle Ages; a chain-mail tunic hung next to a complete suit of armour. There was even a model Roman catapult in one corner. Domenico was pursuing his life's work but in private.

‘Papa, Papa … you have a visitor.' The son avoided my glance, embarrassed at the sight.

An older man, his black hair shocked with twin lightning bolts of white, lay limp across a day bed. He was snoring. From the fumes and the half-empty bottle on the table next to the bed, it was obvious he was drunk.

His son respectfully shook him awake. ‘Papa, you have a visitor.'

Domenico wiped the spittle from his mouth, cursing his son for waking him as he sat up. His gaze hit the pair of pistols with his initials on the handles at my hips, then climbed to my face.

His eyes bulged with guilty fear, as though I was the first of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. He'd understood with one glance at my expression that I knew his secret.

Domenico ordered his son to leave and close the door behind him. The huge man left, still uncertain but too well trained to offer a single protest.

I sat on the chair opposite the bed and considered my target with care. I needed this man's total cooperation, not his abject fear. ‘Signor Torres, I have a gift for you … and a favour to ask in return.'

He was terrified but too proud to try to feed me lies. ‘But how could you know of me? How did you find out?'

‘Yes, signor, I know your secret, but that is not why I am here. I am not here for retribution …'

‘But —'

I put up my hand. ‘Stop!' I ordered.

It was clear that Domenico didn't believe my good intentions. His guilt spoke louder than my reassurance. So I had to find a way to get his complete attention and make him listen.

So I told him the truth.

‘You were born at the great castle in the city of Toledo, the eldest son of a long line of armourers to the noble de Girado family. Your family had built weapons for their patrons since the Middle Ages, everything from swords and body armour to siege engines and Greek fire. When your father died you took his place and lived in the castle … That is, until your new fiancée took the eye of the son of your patron. He attacked the woman who is now your wife and you ran him through with your sword.'

Domenico whitened, but didn't venture a defence.

‘In fear of a murder charge and the revenge of your powerful patron, you and your love took a false name and fled to the furthest corner of the Spanish Empire — Nuevo Mexico.'

‘But how could you, a gringo, know this?' he gasped.

‘That's not important, Domenico. Just listen to me. You hide in Santa Fe because you believe there is still an outstanding warrant against you in Spain. You miss your homeland and you do penance every Easter for betraying your ancestors, your bloodline. But, of course, what else could you've done?'

He dropped his eyes. From the deep lines in his face, I could imagine he must've had this particular
conversation with himself at regular intervals over the past few decades.

I felt sorry for him.

‘My gift to you is this, Domenico. The son of your patron did not die by your sword. He lived another year, only to be cut down by his own father for …' I paused. ‘Let us say, no women were safe with the son, not even those of his own family.'

Domenico stared at me a moment, the words hardly sinking in.

‘It's the truth, Domenico, you can believe me.' It was, in fact, the complete truth.

‘But, but … this can't be.' Tears slipped down the drunken man's face. He wanted to believe me.

‘There is no murder charge against you. And your cousin, Emilio, can verify this. He now lives in San Antonio in Texas. You have a whole branch of your family nearby. They have been searching for you both ever since you left Spain. I want you to telegraph him immediately for confirmation.'

I handed Domenico the address on a slip of paper I had ready.

His eyes lit up at the sight of his cousin's name. He touched the words with a kind of religious awe.

There was a knock at the door.

The giant, no doubt inventing an excuse to check up on us, surged into the office carrying two steaming cups of hot black coffee in one massive fist. He took one look at his father's tears and placed himself between us, an angry bear ready to defend its own.

His father roughly shoved him out of the light in order to enjoy taking in the slip of paper with his cousin's name on it. More tears streamed down his puffy face, tears of hope and joy. He knew I was telling the truth.

As he faced me, Domenico straightened his back, held his head with pride and vigour. He was no longer a murderer hiding from his past, but a new man with a new future. ‘State your favour, Signor Eriksen,' he said grandly. ‘Ask anything.'

His son gawked.

I reached into my saddlebag and pulled out the plans I'd carefully smuggled through the portal.

‘Your craftsmanship is famous, Domenico.' One of his sons would follow in his footsteps and enter the history books. That was how I knew so much about the Torres family. ‘But are you ready to make more intricate weapons? Special ones …'

Domenico Torres' now proud chest swelled at the challenge. ‘I can make anything man can design.'

I hoped he was right. Who knew where this blasted mission would take me? I wasn't a fool. Whatever happened, I was damn well going in with backup.

I unrolled the first sheet and spread it across his lap.

Signor Torres' eyes bulged then lit up. He laughed then slapped his son's meaty posterior. ‘Get my big furnace stoked, Enrico, we have a lot of work to do.'

Domenico swiped the half-empty bottle off the table next to the day bed and hurled it against the wall. A red stain dripped down.